Venom: The Last Dance (2024) Review!!

Synopsis – Eddie and Venom are on the run. Hunted by both of their worlds and with the net closing in, the duo are forced into a devastating decision that will bring the curtains down on Venom and Eddie’s last dance.

My Take – Indeed, it’s a bittersweet moment to know that franchise screenwriter Kelly Marcel‘s directorial debut would mark the final adventure of the symbiote anti-hero Venom and his reluctant human host Eddie Brock. While the earlier two installments have found impressive box office success, being the only shining light in Sony‘s marred SSU (Sony’s Spider-Man Universe), they have also received quite a divisive reception.

Mainly as though they work well enough as throwbacks to an earlier time as a short, silly, glossy and light-hearted burst of mid-00s nostalgia, they are also adopt fun but bloated, unwieldy and incoherent scripts.

But if you’ve already come to terms with this version of Tom Hardy selling a bromance with himself than the savage, brutal duo from the comics, you’re in for a fun ride.

As the final chapter this one is easily the campiest and most mature of the bunch, delivering an entertaining ride with good performances and decent visual effects. Sure, it is too bloated for its runtime time, and has too many subplots, affectively wasting the potential of the main one in typical SSU fashion.

But the banter between Eddie and Venom remains as fun as always and works best when it focuses on Eddie and Venom’s story instead of trying to set up the future of the shared universe. Simply told, if you didn’t like the previous Venom films, this won’t change your mind. It’s still messy, but it gets more right than its predecessors.

Set sometime after the events of Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021), the story once again follows Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and Venom who are on the run after they are framed for the murder of Patrick Mulligan (Stephen Graham). With every cop in San Francisco searching for them, the pair decide to head east towards New York City, hoping to find a way to clear their name.

Unbeknownst to the duo, the evil symbiote creator Knull (Andy Serkis) has sent one of his symbiote-hunting Xenophages: giant, ugly bugs with wood chipper-like mouths which spray the viscera of their victims from blowholes at the back of their heads, to hunt them down and retrieve a “Codex” forged when a symbiote brings its host back from the dead, which can free him from the prison the symbiotes trapped him in long ago, adding further complications to Eddie and Venom’s predicament.

Also right on their heels is soldier Rex Strickland (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who runs a clandestine military outfit from the soon-to-be-decommissioned Area 51. Which also has a top-secret subterranean laboratory that is headed by Dr Teddy Payne (Juno Temple), who along with Sadie Christmas (Clark Backo), supervises experiments to ascertain why the symbiotes have invaded the world of humans and run amok. Hunted by both of their worlds and with the net closing in, the duo are forced into a devastating decision that will bring the curtains down on Venom and Eddie’s last dance.

Here, director Marcel tests Hardy’s chemistry with himself in a road trip film that wholly embraces the deeply weird tone established by this Spider-Man-without-Spider-Man spinoff franchise. As compared to the first two prequels, this one is slightly better. It is fast paced and keeps dumping short bursts of subject matter throughout its exposition. But the half-baked multiple storylines make the plotting seem chaotic.

The introduction of new symbiotes with distinctive personalities, is an element that manages to broaden the intrigue and interest here though. The writing is fairly inventive in its efforts to get the Symbiote to indulge in comic face-offs. The CGI is also more coherently drawn – with an eye to silliness and fun. Particularly in the climax.

The film is also much darker in its humor than its predecessors but it’s not of the laugh-out-loud variety instead a bit absurd at times. For example, the surreal dance sequence with Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu) and Eddie in a Las Vegas penthouse comes at you from left field and feels totally out of place.

Most surprising it also gets quite emotional at the end, making it clear that Eddie and Venom have evolved from mere host and symbiote to something much deeper, and their dynamic was surprisingly touching.

Talking about the much hyped appearance of the immortal super villain Knull, who in the comics is powerful enough to beat the Silver Surfer, the Avengers and the X-Men without breaking sweat. He appears only for a limited screen time and is used only for setting up future SSU films.

Of course, the major draw remains Tom Hardy’s dual, dueling performances as Eddie Brock and Venom, and the bickering chemistry the actor has built up with himself through the first two films. Hardy plays up the former’s addled, paranoid tics and tense physicality harder than ever, and you get the sense that he’s constantly on the brink of a breakdown like his character.

While the film brings back Stephen Graham and adds a roster of talented actors like Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans, Alanna Ubach and Clark Backo, who gets some excellent moments in the climax, their roles are underutilized. On the whole, ‘Venom: The Last Dance’ is a messy yet entertaining end to an inoffensively silly and low-stakes series.